POSITION · THE COMMUNIST CORNER
Property, inheritance, and a state with nothing above it
Communism holds that no one should privately own the land, factories, and tools that make wealth, and that a strong state should take them over for everyone before it fades away. We are not communist because God gave property to households, because the sharing Scripture praises is a gift from owners, and because a state with nothing above it rules without limit.
01
Where did it come from?
Karl Marx began by rejecting God. “The criticism of religion is the prerequisite of all criticism,” he wrote in 1844, holding that men invent religion rather than the reverse. In The Communist Manifesto (1848) he and Friedrich Engels reduced their program to one line: “the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.” The workers would “centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State,” and one of the Manifesto’s ten measures was the “Abolition of all right of inheritance.” In 1917 V. I. Lenin took power in Russia to carry out the program, promising that the state would afterward wither away.
02
What truth has been twisted to produce it?
Marx wrote about real wrongs, and Scripture condemned them first: “the hire of the labourers … which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth” (Jas. 5:4). The church in Jerusalem went past justice into generosity. Its members “had all things common” (Acts 4:32). But when Ananias lied about his gift, Peter told him the land had been his to keep: “Whiles it remained, was it not thine own? and after it was sold, was it not in thine own power?” (Acts 5:4). The sharing was a gift from owners.
Communism takes a true thing, God’s care for the poor and the church’s free giving, and turns it into a false one, the state taking by force.
Lenin even took Paul’s rule for the church, “if any would not work, neither should he eat” (2 Thess. 3:10), and declared it a socialist principle already achieved.
03
Where does it lead?
A state that owns the land, the tools, and the bread decides who eats, and Marx’s first premise left nothing above it. Lenin defined the dictatorship of the workers as rule held by force against the owning class, “rule that is unrestricted by any laws” (1918). The Manifesto predicted that “the bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course” along with capital. The state Lenin founded did not wither away. It lasted until 1991.
04
Why we are not communist
God gave property to households, not to the state. The land of Israel was his, “the land is mine” (Lev. 25:23), and he divided it among families as an inheritance (Num. 26:53–54). When Ahab wanted Naboth’s vineyard, Naboth refused: “My God forbid me that I should give thee the inheritance of my fathers” (3 Kgdms 20:3 [1 Kings 21:3]), the right the Manifesto would abolish. Ahab took it after Jezebel had Naboth killed, and God sent Elijah to pronounce sentence on the man who had “slain and taken possession” (3 Kgdms 20:19 [1 Kings 21:19]).
Our map puts communism where authority comes from above, and on that point it agrees with Scripture. The difference is what sits at the top. Remove God and the party takes his place, answerable to no one.
None of this lets the rich do as they please. Scripture judges those who cheat their workers and commands open hands toward the poor (Deut. 15:11). Christians share, and must, as owners giving freely under God.
Sources
Karl Marx, “A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right: Introduction” (1844).
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto (1848), English edition of 1888 edited by Engels, ch. 2.
V. I. Lenin, The State and Revolution (1917), chs. 1 and 5.
V. I. Lenin, The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky (1918), “How Kautsky Turned Marx into a Common Liberal.”
Published by Beyond Left and Right. The New Testament is quoted from the King James Version and the Old Testament from Brenton’s Septuagint (1844). Marx’s 1844 essay and Lenin are quoted from the English translations published by the Marxists Internet Archive. Correspondence: contact@beyondleftandright.com
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